Tuesday, December 16, 2003

The Progressive Review has an excellent collection of material on the real scandal of the collapse of the WTC towers: they were not properly constructed. In fact, the Rockefeller plan to construct the towers involved the participation of the Port Authority partly because it was not subject to New York City building codes. It is also likely that corners were cut in the process of construction which the architects would not have approved. There are workers who worked on the towers still around who could give detailed testimony of what they were instructed to do, and not do, in building the towers, but no one wants to ask the proper questions as the answers might cost rich people money. Here are two thought experiments:

Consider what would have happened if the towers had been properly constructed and not collapsed when hit by the two planes. Only a few hundred people would have died, and the towers would have been repaired and be fully functional by now. The billions of dollars of damage to New York would have been avoided, as would much of the fear which still grips the country. Would the damage have been sufficient for the Bush Administration to spend billions and billions of dollars on two wars, both of which have been disasters for the reputation and financial situation of the United States? Would Ashcroft have been enabled to wipe his ass with the American Constitution? Would the whole life of the United States still turn on what happened on that one day?

Consider what would have happened if two planes had accidentally hit the two towers, causing them to collapse. There would have been no terrorist element in the disaster. Would that not have focused the thoughts of Americans on the real crime, how it was that these buildings could have been allowed to have been constructed as they were?

There were two issues that arose on September 11 - the terrorist issue and the construction issue. The United States has spent an enormous amount of energy and money on the terrorist issue, but completely ignored the construction issue. Since the same shoddy construction standards almost certainly exist in other buildings, it is arguable that the construction issue poses more of a real threat to the safety of Americans than the terrorism issue.